Saturday, 30 January 2016

Native Speaker

Kind of a novelty read this, in that I’ve
just wrapped up almost a year’s worth of study on the Native Speaker Ideal and
this seemed like an appropriate way to top things off. Also a great (by which I
mean flimsy as all hell) excuse to start collecting these Penguin Drop Caps
editions.

I only heard of Lee last year, with the
release of On Such a Full Sea
gathering a bit of attention in SF circles. Aside from that though, I came to
this pretty much blind. It’s clearly a great book, but it also cut very close
to the bone for me, and was a frankly terrifying experience in places. I shall
explain.

Henry Park is a second-generation
Korean-American, and this is a diaspora novel exploring notions of identity,
community, and belonging in the way diaspora novels are wont to do. The key
twist here is that Henry is also a, what? Private detective? Free-lance spy? It’s
never really nailed down, but he basically works as a mole, getting close to
his marks and compiling reports on the aspects of their lives they would rather
were kept private. What happens to that information afterwards is anyone’s
guess. A large part of his job, then, is creating identities for himself in
order to pass within the circle of his targets, while maintaining a certain distance
from them for the sake of safety as much as anything else. Thematic unity ahoy.

Henry’s mark this time is a Korean-American
councilman looking to run for mayor of New York, and this tale of infiltration
and acceptance runs in parallel with flashbacks to Henry’s own childhood as the
son of immigrants, and his relationship with his father especially. If that’s
weren’t a situation ripe enough with symbolism Lee also throws into the mix
Henry’s ongoing attempt to reconcile with his (white, American) wife after
their relationship fell apart following the death of their young son. (That’d
be the ‘close to the bone’ bit right there. The dying kids bit, not the rocky
relationship, fortunately.) The prose is wonderfully precise and the literary
explorations of theme and character are all you would or could expect, but
perhaps the most surprising thing is how well it works as a spy story. In the
later stages there’s genuine tension about Henry’s ability to serve two
masters, as all spooks must, and how his assignment will pan out. It also
features the great immigrant city of New York almost as a character in its own
right, which is a very nice segue into the next month of reading I’ve got lined
up. All-in-all, a pleasingly serendipitous experience.